The Resurrectionist of Caligo

by Wendy Trimboli

  A pair of women with parasols eyed him askance. He glanced at his reflection in a window and saw a roughed-up rogue with bloodshot eyes, clad incongruously in fine crimson livery. With trembling hands, he removed his gaudy coat and offered it to a bewildered passing youth in exchange for his threadbare jacket. At least now he fit in with his surroundings.

  Chill air filled his lungs and soothed his throbbing head. Pangs of nausea accompanied foggy memories of a golden dagger and the scuff of his knees on stone. Once, catching a glimpse of the princess in a sweetshop advertisement, a rush of gratitude for her sent him staggering into a gentleman passerby. That elixir of blood must have addled him good. Damn faerie magic.

  He leaned against the facade of a medical instruments shop, his cap pulled low, and eyed the front of St Colthorpe’s. Sibet had told him to fetch Ada, so fetch her he would. She hadn’t expressly forbidden him from performing autopsies on the side.

  The night-shift physician must have reported last night’s skirmish, for a pair of constables flanked the entryway. Crossing the street, Roger headed for the back alley. The hospital’s rear corridors wouldn’t be as closely watched. If he was lucky, Dr Lundfrigg would be doing his morning rounds. Once Roger explained himself, the royal physician would surely call off the police. Perhaps he’d even lend Roger a scalpel and his microscope.

  Roger slipped through the hospital’s rear morgue entrance. A pair of stiffs lay under sheets on slabs. A quick check proved neither were Celeste, though both bore tags with instructions for burial: an adolescent boy to be given a third-class funeral by his surviving family, and an unclaimed old woman, destined to be buried in a sack at the Tenderbone Interment Ground for paupers. By Roger’s reckoning, the stiffs were worth nine and seven shells, respectively. Remembering Ada, he pulled himself away.

  Roger traversed the maze of corridors, ducking into doorways at the slightest noise. Approaching the women’s annex, he was five paces from the ward door when it opened. The sight of a blue uniform stopped Roger in his tracks. A constable emerged with a truncheon tucked under one arm, followed by the same young physician from the night-shift, bleary-eyed and stubble-faced, but with no apparent injuries from their row.

  “That’s him,” shrilled the physician, pointing at Roger. “The man from my report.”

  Roger backed away, intending to run, and collided with the solid chest of an orderly who had come up behind him. Hands like forceps gripped Roger’s shoulders. The strong-armed orderly regularly held down unwilling surgical patients and knew what pressure points to employ.

  “You sure you recognize him, Dr Foley?” asked the constable. His thick muttonchops extended to his chin.

  “Without a doubt.” Dr Foley rubbed the side of his head where Roger had cuffed him earlier. “He assaulted me when I thwarted his criminal intentions last night. Back to take care of unfinished business, are you?”

  The constable approached Roger, halting close enough that the toes of their boots nearly touched.

  “You do look familiar,” said the constable, and Roger recognized him from his arrest at Eldridge’s. “I’ve nicked you before.”

  “Oh, I’ll wager he’s a bodysnatcher,” said the physician with a nasty grin. “Might even be the Greyanchor Strangler’s apprentice.”

  Roger raised his hands in protest, wishing he’d socked the young doctor in the eye when he’d had the chance. The orderly pushed Roger face-first against the wall so the constable could pat him down.

  A calm came over Roger. All the nooses in the world couldn’t scare him now. He pressed his palms against the brick while that gloating weasel of a doctor looked on. By now a second constable and a small crowd of hospital staff had come to gawk. Where was Dr Lundfrigg?

  “What do you have to say for yourself?” asked the first constable. “Ain’t the royal physician here?”

  Dr Foley crossed his arms. “Never came in to relieve me. Must be held up at Malmouth.”

  “I’ve a girl what depends on me.” Roger mustered his confidence and continued, “Her mother’s ill, yet I were booted from the premises for attending her.”

  “You were a person of suspicion in a restricted area,” retorted Dr Foley. “The girl was but a convenient alibi.”

  Roger ignored him and addressed the two constables. “You can take me away after I’ve seen her. She’ll be in that ward there.”

  The physician spat. “You mean the feral beast who swung a curette at a nurse and nearly gouged out an eye? I locked the horrid creature in a linen cupboard.”

  Roger clenched his jaw and craned his neck to look the man in the eye. “You pisspot.”

  Dr Foley turned to the constables. “I want slander and libel added to his assault charges. He has a prison brand on his neck. I saw it.”

  Roger pounded his fist on the brick. “Go bugger a goat.” Ada would be safest at the palace, if only he could get her there. If he made a big enough scene, Dr Lundfrigg would have to get involved. “Is this what you’re looking for?” Ripping off his cravat, he bared his wounded neck and raised his chin so that little prick and the constables could get an eyeful. “If I’m to be arrested for drubbing a tosser like that who abuses a grieving child, I’d like to at least black his lamps first.”

  Roger braced himself, expecting the orderly to smash his face against the wall. Silence. One of the constables stepped forward to make the orderly release Roger’s shoulders. Roger gaped at the lawmen, who bore sheepish looks.

  “Our sincerest apologies,” said the first constable, and shooed the orderly away. “We won’t detain you any longer, sir.”

  Roger shook his head in disbelief.

  “What are you doing?” Dr Foley cut in. “Why aren’t you arresting him?”

  The second constable tipped his helmet to Roger. “A good day to you,” he said, and slipped away.

  “Have you lost your bleeding mind?”

  The remaining constable coughed to get Roger’s attention. “I believe you said you were going to ‘black his lamps,’ sir?”

  What witchcraft was this? Roger touched his neck. During his probation he’d taken care to bandage and hide his mark, for fear he’d be turned in and executed. But the constables had no interest in arresting him after his Binding. Apparently a Straybound had much more authority than a prisoner on parole. Sibet had said they did dirty work for royals, legal and otherwise, and were an abuse of royal authority. Still, Roger didn’t care to pass up his newfound powers. The constable prodded the equally confounded young doctor in Roger’s direction with his truncheon.

  Such an opportunity might never come again. Roger spat into his hand and wound up for a wallop.

  Dr Foley winced and raised his hands in self-defense. At the last second, Roger pulled his punch and let his arm drop to his side. He couldn’t hit a physician like this, even if the man deserved it.

  “Show me to the cupboard where you locked the girl. The sergeant here will come along.”

  Roger re-tied his cravat. So this was how being Straybound worked. Maybe shop owners would give him free pies if he flashed his neck their way. Or he might steal one, and the constables would pretend it never happened. A dishonest man could murder as he pleased. Roger shuddered. Imagine if he’d really been the Greyanchor Strangler. Still, there had to be a catch. His bewitchment, as far as he could tell, relied on Sibet. Just the thought of pleasing her warmed his blood. Bewitchment? No, he’d always felt that way.

  He hadn’t the time to wrap his head around Straybound particulars. He would ask Sibet in the morning at his devotional – that frightful yet unavoidable ritual. But for now he had bigger eels to pickle.

  Dr Foley, his face glistening with sweat, led Roger and the constable down an adjacent corridor. The constable hung back, deferring to Roger with a meekness unusual for the law.

  “She’s in there.” Dr Foley pointed. “The back of the storeroom.”

  “Poor thing,” said a nurse, heading for the storeroom with a stack of linens. “We chased her into the
cupboard there an’ locked it. We had no choice. Kept screaming and carrying on, she did. Nearly took out my eye.”

  Roger took a breath and placed an ear to the door. All was quiet. He knocked.

  “Ghost? You in there?” He tried the door, but it was locked.

  “Dr Foley has the key,” said the nurse.

  He patted his pockets. “Not anymore. I told her I’d toss it out a window if she didn’t shut her trap.”

  Even the constable looked ready to punch him.

  “She tried to stab my foot with a trocar. If you had seen–”

  The cupboard doors rattled, accompanied by a high-pitched wail.

  “Stay calm, Ghost,” Roger called out. “I’m here. You’ll be free in two shakes.”

  A faint whimper answered.

  The constable offered up his truncheon to bash in the door, but Roger turned it down. Another cupboard with glass doors held cases of surgical instruments. He selected one ivory-handed knife with a thin, angled blade similar in shape to the hooked lock pick in his personal collection.

  “This should do it. Won’t brain her by accident, neither. Now leave me,” he told the constable. “And if you book that man there for assault, I won’t complain to no one.”

  The constable doffed his hat and led the doctor away by the arm.

  The lock proved little hindrance to an expert like Roger who’d cracked crypts with far better security. He jiggered the door, half-afraid of what he’d find inside.

  Light from the window cast a pale triangle into the cupboard. Shredded gauze and linen lay tangled with a broken broom handle and a ripped surgeon’s apron. For a moment, Roger thought Ada must have escaped. She’d curled herself so tightly that at first he mistook her for a crumpled wad of bandages.

  Roger crouched and reached a tentative hand toward her. But she didn’t launch at him with teeth bared. She did worse. She lay still.

  He could guess what had become of Ada’s mother in his absence, but couldn’t think of how to comfort the girl. Had she been locked in here for nearly a day? Guilt sat heavy as a tumor in his chest.

  He took her hand. “Come on, then. Let’s get you home.” Home? The garret, of course. Taking her to the palace would be unthinkable in her current state. But he had until tomorrow morning. Ada would need some time alone with some charcoal for drawing, or perhaps a pickled pig’s heart to chop to bits.

  “They took her,” Ada wept. She pushed away his hand. “They took her away.”

  “They take us all away, at some point.” Roger loathed the usual niceties overheard at funerals. She’s in a better place. Her soul has found rest. Saint Mildred has led her to the quiet seas. He could never bring himself to speak such rot. “Our world has been around longer than you could imagine. Your ma lived in her time and you live in yours. You both lined up for a good nine years. What are the chances of that, in all of human time? Near impossible. Count yourself lucky.”

  Ada threw herself on him and sobbed into his chest. He sat and held her until the sobs changed to dry, heaving breaths.

  “Roger,” she whispered in his ear. It was the first time she’d said his real name. “A man came and took her. Said she were headed to a pauper’s grave on account of having no family as could pay. They chased me off. I tried…” She swallowed a sob. “Roger, when the man took her away, she were still alive.”

  “She was in her last hours. Sometimes they look alive still, right after. But there was nothing anyone could do.” Roger stared at the tiny square storeroom window, his thoughts a stew of undercooked scraps. Ada still seemed to be in denial. He should have stayed with her. “We don’t like letting go of people we love. Sometimes we tell ourselves tales when we see things we don’t want to believe–”

  “It ain’t no tale. She were alive.”

  Roger thought it best not to disagree. Besides, something didn’t add up. The body would have been taken to the hospital morgue, but he’d seen the stiffs for himself, and neither was Celeste. One of them had also been destined for the pauper’s burial plot, but the man who drove the cart would only make a trip every few days. Some rival resurrectionist could have taken Celeste, but that, too, didn’t add up. Why take her when the young male corpse with barely a blemish would have fetched a higher price?

  “I know a sack-’em-up man don’t care much for feelings,” Ada said, wiping snot from her nose. “You’ll think it’s rubbish. But I wanted to put her next door to Sir Bentley Morris. In the empty velvet-lined coffin where I used to sleep.”

  Roger squeezed her hand. “Well, I have all night, and certain professional knowledge. I’ll find her for you.” Roger had already some idea of where to look.

  “And if you get caught? They’ll hang you proper this time, sack-’emup man. And then… I won’t have no one.”

  Roger rose to his feet and brushed himself off. “Don’t you worry about that, Ghost. I’m… well, let’s just say I’ve built up an immunity to hanging. So long as I’ve finished by dawn tomorrow.”

  “You’re daft, you are,” Ada snuffled into the sleeve of her worn dress but showed the first signs of a smile.

  Roger lifted Ada onto her feet. “I’ll set out after dark, some time near midnight just to be safe. You head off to Mrs Carver’s, cut up some meat if it makes you feel better. Then go scrounge up a candle or two, and some flowers to pay our respects, and I’ll meet you outside Sir Bentley Morris’ crypt when the bells of St Myrtle’s strike two.”

  30

  Lieutenant Calloway grumbled all the way to Dame Angeline’s salon. As the carriage bounced and creaked along a stretch of old cobblestone road, Sibylla caught wisps of his muttered objections: “such an indecorous endeavor… impossible to bring a princess there… she’s being too cruel,” and a particularly shrill, “ruined by foreign influence!” Sibylla knew her ploy to enlist his aid hadn’t been above board, but then she’d never asked the man to profess his love in ink. Besides, there were lives at stake.

  Personal correspondence made for fine blackmail. As it turned out, Lieutenant Calloway had not considered what his father General Calloway, a close friend to the crown prince, would make of his son’s love letter to Prince Edgar’s intended. The moment it dawned on him that Sibylla aimed to show his beautifully penned correspondence to his father, his brazen veneer melted into blubbering protestations. He’d be flogged, beheaded, or worse – disowned! Once he’d wiped his tears on a silk handkerchief, he agreed to help her enter Dame Angeline’s salon.

  Sibylla insisted she only wished to see inside the salon out of curiosity, yet he continued stewing. This would not do.

  “Do you remember what Mr Counselvice says to the barnmaid after he rescues her from the opera singer?”

  “Sorry for the intrusion. This’ll only take an intermission,” answered Lieutenant Calloway, adopting a waggish accent.

  She knew it! He had read her Salston plays, and probably kept them stashed inside his trunk. She clapped the side of his arm as if a fellow cavalryman. “Come along then, man. We’ll be back in time for your evening calisthenics. Just be your cheerful self.”

  Arriving at the salon, Sibylla alighted from the cab assisted by Lieutenant Calloway in all his gold-braided crimson finery. Now she only required the lieutenant’s formal introduction to Dame Angeline.

  “Welcome to Dame Angeline’s Salon, the diamond in Brocade Circle’s crown,” said the servant who took their coats and hats at the door.

  Though she had yet to be recognized about town, Sibylla had rouged her lips, brushed her eyelashes with soot, then borrowed a dress from one of the maids. Pale ink freckles dotted her nose and cheeks to further obfuscate her appearance, and she wore her hair loose like some country ingenue.

  “I say,” Lieutenant Calloway called out to no one in particular. “I’ve brought a young duck with me. She has potential running out of her like grease from a pear-mince pudding. To whom must we speak, the dame herself? We demand an audience!”

  Though the lieutenant had sworn he’d only
visited the salon once or twice, women filtered out of the adjoining rooms to greet him. A lady dressed like a chrysanthemum in yellow ruffles beckoned them to follow. As they glided along the corridor, familiar voices cackled from inside one of the drawing rooms. She glanced through the door. Her cousins Edmund and Edward lounged in settees, attended to by cheerful young women.

  “Should Dame Angeline accept you, beware of the princes,” said the chrysanthemum matter-of-factly. “They particularly like new flowers. As regular as the fogs of Caligo, those two.”

  Her cousins would make terrible sport of finding Sibylla here, no doubt informing Grandmother straightaway. She hurried past to avoid them. She didn’t need to give the queen any more reasons to doubt her worth. When they finally ascended the stairs to the salon’s upper floor, Sibylla was thankful to leave the sound of her cousins’ laughter below.

  Sibylla and Lieutenant Calloway entered a plush sitting room forested with ferns and potted ficus. Paintings in gilded frames, of bare women draped suggestively in vibrant silks, adorned the walls.

  “Ah, Lieutenant Calloway. One of our favored guests.” A longlegged, handsome woman stood to greet them. Folds of black and crimson satin sloped around her body so that she looked almost volcanic. A pendant hung suspended from her throat. “You’ve brought me a protégée? Whatever flight of fancy possessed you to think you had an eye for spotting jewels?”

  Lieutenant Calloway hesitated, looking to Sibylla first, then answered. “Isla here is my second cousin thrice removed… and she begged me to.”

  “She begged you, did she?” Angeline gave Sibylla a knowing wink. “Isla, was it?”

  Sibylla curtsied. “Isla Lindley.”

  “I’m unsure what he told you, but we are most particular about the breeding of our girls, Isla.” A familiar peach-blossom hatpin affixed her little feathered hat to her swept-up hair. “Even with a gentleman’s introduction, there is no guarantee of admittance to our salon.”